Category: Videos

A group of researchers at the University of California Berkeley have trained a dog to walk on various terrain in under twenty minutes using machine learning. Using a ‘deep reinforcement’ form of artificial intelligence, the robot can quickly acclimate to traversing almost any ground cover it finds itself on.

Apparently firm believers that no ideas are bad ideas, the YouTube channel Play To DIY constructed a bicycle almost entirely out of concrete. The behemoth bike weighs an incredible 134.5 kg (~296 lb), and actually balances and rides pretty smoothly, all things considered.

Because there are very few things you can’t create with LEGO, YouTuber Brick Technology has constructed a collection of transparent, spherical LEGO machines capable of spinning their orbs fast enough to produce water vortices inside. How about that!

If you want kids to care about it these days, it has to be on social media, so NASA has released a Twitter clip of sounds created by a distant galaxy cluster, presumably to reignite youth’s interest in space.

Korean 3D printing company Glück produces the Sculpia printing platform. And in this video, it demonstrates the platform’s capabilities by creating an army of humanoid robot body parts. “Finally,” I imagine Skynet thinking to itself while making plans to mass produce a whole line of Terminators.

We’ve already seen a quadruped robotic dog equipped with a submachine gun, so obviously, it was the next logical step towards humanity’s demise to strap a rocket launcher to one. Spotted at a recent military convention, You can purchase a robotic dog like this for about $2,700, but the ninja costume and rocket launcher, you’ll have to find yourself.

Remember that 2-ton Thor’s hammer the folks at YouTube channel Hacksmith built? Of course, you do. If you were a superhero, you would be The Memory Master. Well, now the fun-loving builders have taken that hammer and dropped it from 100 feet on various objects, including a minivan.

Presumably using a healthy dose of The Force, filmmaker Glen Vivaris of the YouTube channel Glen Makes crafted this Star Wars-inspired workbench from an old IKEA desk. Most impressive! For reference, I turned my old IKEA desk into kindling, which I then used to light the sofa at my last bonfire party.

Discontent with just bringing a portable gaming system like a Steam Deck or Nintendo Switch into the bathroom to play games while on the can, YouTuber Basically Homeless went and assembled a full-fledged gaming PC in the tank of his working toilet.

Who hasn’t dreamed of resting their rear on some soft green sprouts while they go about their bathroom business? Good news! YouTuber Ali Spagnola created the Sprouthouse: a toilet completely covered in chia seedlings. As far as good ideas go, I think we can all agree this one is Nobel Prize-worthy.

Because dream it, and, with enough funding, you can achieve it, the gang at the Hacksmith channel on YouTube went and constructed a massive 2-ton version of Thor’s Hammer, Mjolnir. Admittedly, that is probably the largest Thor’s hammer I have ever seen.

Art collective Meow Wolf’s immersive art exhibit Omega Mart in Las Vegas is full of surprises, and new to the store’s lineup of WTF-ery comes Butter Frenzy 2 – a claw machine full of unwrapped sticks of butter you can win.

Because there’s a festival for everything, programmer Phil Ashby went and took an electronic badge from the 2022 ElectroMagnetic Field Festival (aka EMF Camp) and got it to run DOOM. I am not surprised. I also won’t be surprised when somebody manages to run DOOM on my Casio watch; it’s simply the natural progression of things.

Because terrible ideas come in all shapes, sizes, and price points, someone bought a $3,000 robot dog (knocked-off of Boston Dynamics’ SpotMini) on AliExpress, then went and strapped a Russian PP-19 Vityaz submachine gun to the top of it.

To promote the upcoming release of its Mighty Bowser build set, LEGO went and constructed a massive 14-foot animatronic 1:1 scale replica of the reptilian villain, made up of over 663,900 pieces. Wow, now that’s a lot of pieces!

Researchers from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech (my alma mater!), led by Assistant Professor Michael Bartlett, have developed the Octa-Glove, a glove with octopus-like suckers on the fingers designed for firmly grasping objects underwater without requiring grip strength.